Steve McIntyre

Stephen McIntyre is the primary author of the blog Climate Audit, noted for its many articles skeptical of climate change. He is a prominent critic of scientific studies of temperature records of the past 1000 years that show increasing global temperatures. Stephen McIntyre has worked in mineral exploration for 30 years, much of that time as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies. "I've spent most of my life in business, mostly on the stock market side of mining exploration deals," he said in 2009.[1] He is a “strategic advisor” to CGX Energy, which describes its “principal business activity” as “petroleum and natural gas exploration”

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Biography

McIntyre is, according to the Wall Street Journal, a "semiretired Toronto minerals consultant" who has spent "two years and about $5,000 of his own money trying to double-check the influential graphic" known as the "hockey stick" that illustrates a reconstruction of average surface temperatures in the Northern hemisphere, created by University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann. He initially published two articles in the journal Energy and Environment, but has since published in Journal Of Climate [5], Geophysical Research Letters [6], Atmospheric Science Letters [7] and elsewhere.

McIntyre was also exposed for having unreported ties to CGX Energy, Inc., an oil and gas exploration company, which listed McIntyre as a "strategic advisor." [8] He is the former President of Dumont Nickel Inc., and was President of Northwest Exploration Company Limited, the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc. As of 2003, he was the strategic advisor of CGX Energy Inc. He has also been a policy analyst at both the governments of Ontario and of Canada. [9]

At the 2007 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, McIntyre gave a joint presentation on hurricanes and climate change with Roger Pielke Jr.[10]

The Hockey Stick Study Controversy

Stephen McIntyre is especially known for his critique of Michael E. Mann'shockey stick study, a "reconstruction of temperatures over the past 1,000 years based on records captured in tree rings, corals and other markers," which shows temperatures swinging sharply upward in the 20th century.[11] Articles written by McIntyre, along with colleague Ross McKitrick, critical of Mann's hockey stick study led to congressional inquiry into the scientific methods of the studies. Independent research has found that McIntyre's critique may have "limited significance." Researchers at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht, Germany, confirmed "a glitch" in Dr. Mann's work but "found this glitch to be of very minor significance."[12] The (USA) National Research Council responded to a request from Congress and concluded after a thorough study that the scientific evidence then available generally supported Mann's analysis, noting in particular that the global warming of the last few decades exceeded that of any comparable period in the past 400 years, although less confidence could be placed on earlier periods [13]. The issue was addressed in the Fourth IPPC Report which also concluded that Mann's analysis was essentially valid and substantiated by more recent work. [14]

In recent years, McIntyre has extended his criticisms to also address the "spaghetti chart"; McIntyre argues that all the new reconstructions which confirmed Mann's earlier results shared some common proxies and that minor changes/updates with regard to proxy selection completely changed the results, again casting doubt on the conclusion that modern-era temperatures are unusual.[1]. McIntyre criticised a more recent paper by Mann et al. to which Mann responded, finally concluding that the " criticisms have no merit" [15]

Contact details

ClimateAudit.org - weblog associated with McIntyre and McKitrick that seems primarily focused on debunking the "hockey stick" graph. Steve McIntyre is the primary contributor to the site.

External articles

Deep Climate's Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, Part I and Part 2; February 2010. ("McIntyre and McKitrick have published exactly one – that’s right, uno – peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal.")